I. Field
The following description relates generally to wireless communications, and more particularly to transitioning between states associated with wireless terminals in a wireless communication system.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication; for instance, voice and/or data may be provided via such wireless communication systems. A typical wireless communication system, or network, can provide multiple users access to one or more shared resources. For instance, a system may use a variety of multiple access techniques such as Frequency Division Multiplexing (FDM), Time Division Multiplexing (TDM), Code Division Multiplexing (CDM), and others.
Common wireless communication systems employ one or more base stations that provide a coverage area. A typical base station can transmit multiple data streams for broadcast, multicast and/or unicast services, wherein a data stream may be a stream of data that can be of independent reception interest to a wireless terminal. A wireless terminal within the coverage area of such base station can be employed to receive one, more than one, or all the data streams carried by the composite stream. Likewise, a wireless terminal can transmit data to the base station or another wireless terminal.
As wireless communication systems continue to increase in popularity and usage, an escalating number of users may concurrently attempt to employ such wireless communication systems. However, bandwidth over which these wireless communication systems operate is finite. Further, wireless terminals employed in such systems may be constrained by power limitations. Significant power usage in Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) based wireless communication systems may be associated with uplink transmission of reports to base stations. These reports may pertain to, for example, signal quality, data packets to be transferred, and the like. Allocating resources such as a dedicated control channel to a single user may inefficiently provide too many resources to that particular user, when a lesser allocation of resources may suffice supporting operation by that user. Further, when over-allocation occurs, system-wide performance may be negatively impacted since fewer users may employ the system and operation of the wireless terminal may be detrimentally affected due to greater power consumption.